Western Short StoryIvaloo Outside the LinesTom Sheehan

Western Short Story

Sheriff William
“Chill” Blanes, appearing distant or withdrawn, sat at the end of
the bar in The Broken Horse Saloon nursing a drink as the bartender
stared at him again with concern. The bartender, Joe Bellville, had
known the sheriff of Tascosa for three years, and decided to slip
himself into the sheriff’s thinking as he approached him from the
far end where he and two customers were talking.

He said to Blanes,
“You got either one of them roadmen from last week on your mind,
Sheriff, or a woman. The roadman thing will solve itself one way or
another, but if it’s a woman, that’s a whole other issue. If she
owns you, you ain’t ever getting free, and if you own her, she
ain’t ever letting go. It’s that simple.”

He poured a whiskey
for the sheriff. “I been there. This one’s on me.”

Blanes laughed a
half reply. “That’s easy enough said, Joe, from where you set
yourself.” He was thinking back on his most recent thoughts of
Ivaloo, not knowing if they were minutes, hours, or days ago.

At times, when
Ivaloo came into his mind, he’d reach a point of such clarity that
he’d almost reach out to grab it. The whole situation, with Ivaloo
and him and Harley Trufant, came under the clearest light where he
almost saw everything involved, including the ending, but they’d
whoosh off again, quick as a shooting star across the prairie sky.
He’d struggle to get the clarity back, but when it was gone it was
gone … whole sections falling away as if they’d never happened.
He agreed that some of them didn’t. But the light was so powerful,
it burned with a bright edge behind his eyes.

As it was, Ivaloo
came every day Trufant was in jail, swooping in some days, slipping
in on other days, a chameleon of sorts. But Ivaloo, no last name said
and none ever given, offered only those signs of her love. Never did
she communicate any of her other feelings in general, her health, her
connections, or her intentions.

“I’m just
Ivaloo,” she’d said that first visit. “No other name. Never had
one I know of, never cared for one. I’m Ivaloo here to see Harley.
She had also said, which might have set everything off in his mind,
“I got nothing to hide, Sheriff, and you can search if you want,
but please don’t do it if Harley can see us. He thinks no other man
in the world has ever touched me like that and I want to keep it that
way.”

The sheriff acceded
to her request, doing a mild but mind-boggling simple search of
accessories, promised spaces, neutral territories all the way. The
dress, the red dress, was a perfect fit.

Ivaloo delivered
that spiel of hers in the doorway of the Tascosa Jail and Sheriff’s
Office, in plain sight of several witnesses who were gathered on the
walkway, including two ladies in the mix of on-lookers who were wives
of town councilmen, known flannel-mouths, clothesline gabbers. The
sheriff often thought of that moment way down the line, how it would
sound after it had made the rounds of the town. More than once, out
on a posse chase, or checking on some wild complaint from a rancher’s
wife, or a daughter at her best histrionics about some cowpoke, he’d
think about Ivaloo and her ways.

He thought about
Harley Trufant a lot, too, and how it had all gone down for him.

Every day, in spite
of what the “ladies” of Tascosa had to say about her, Ivaloo came
wearing the same red dress she had worn that first day. It was flame
red. It was beautiful and it was cinched at her waist like a new colt
might have been cinched with a miniature saddle. There did not appear
to be room to conceal a gun or a tool of any kind on that splendid
form of hers.

Blanes thought only
of the “glories” that she did conceal.

Some of Joe
Bellville’s arguments came back to him one evening when he had not
seen Ivaloo since the night before, assuming she had stayed the whole
day in “the ladies only” rooming house at the other end of town.

He generated his
own argument in the midst of that frame of mind: What if he let
Ivaloo stay with Trufant for a few hours, by themselves in the cell?
Trufant would get her out of his system for a while and think of all
the good things outside, if he’d ever get there. And Ivaloo might
let go of him for a while after she’d been alone with him, the
killer and the jailbird and the sure hanger if there ever was one on
the horizon? Wouldn’t that allow some room in her mind for him, the
kind sheriff? Would she treat him special? Was it worth a try?

Oh, he wanted to
check her out every visit, but the whole ensemble, tight as silk on a
store dummy, allowed no space, lump, room, bulge (other than the
glorious ones he thought of too often) and no possible extra cargo
space to aid in an escape. What the hell could she sneak in anyway on
that form of hers except high heaven, deep Hell, gratitude and grace
like no one lady could carry, never mind hold within herself for long
stretches, like she did inside the jail with her lover on the other
side of the bars?

As sheriff, he
could do as he wished, and Ivaloo was foremost in his wishes. There
was a chance for him. He didn’t have to go to “the hotel” all
the time.

Anyway, what could
she possibly sneak into the jail? he asked again, and let the
question go unanswered

Trufant was going
to hang whenever the judge came to Tascosa and the trial was
conducted. There was no two ways about that in the sheriff’s mind.
He would hang for the murder of a rancher who refused to budge an
inch in his own home. So, it was said, Trufant moved the rancher with
a blast from a shotgun … both barrels. Moved him against a wall
standing straight up, bloody, but separated from some of his parts.

Blanes, on every
visit that Ivaloo made, watched her from one edge of his desk that he
sat on, like a true warden, until the pair slipped hands onto each
other, his up and hers down, like Hell was in the cell and just
outside it.

The sheriff,
holding by as long as he could, eventually slid off the desk, turned
his back, tended to some minor task on the bulletin board, or checked
the load on each rifle in the posse rack, or looked out the window at
any lady walking by that was young, dressed in color, and made him
think of what he could not look at any longer, just in the other room
of the jail.

So he gave Ivaloo
and her boyfriend a gift one night and left them by themselves in his
cell, after arranging the deputy’s night off from duty. They were
alone for a few hours that must have been both heaven and hell for
them. When she left she kissed the sheriff on the cheek. “You are
some kind of a man, Mr. Blanes,” she said as she left the jail, the
sashay in place as she disappeared into the shadows, dim lights
coming on around town in the quiet retreats, the stars popping free
in the sky, on a mountain crest the edge of the moon starting to
bloom for a new phase and guaranteeing new attractions.

Ivaloo, dear
Ivaloo, continued to be a cough in Blane’s throat, a lump under his
badge, a wish on his mind. He swore she had the subtlest moves ever
seen, believing she had generated them for him, and not for the
prisoner. He was totally mesmerized by what she said, how she moved,
how she’d end her visit. On none of those visits did he ever see
Trufant’s hand retrieve a small metal piece from her bra and slip
it into his pocket. He never knew how many times the transfer had
been accomplished.

The sheriff’s
escape from his own predicament was thinking ahead to a visit to The
Broken Horse Saloon. He’d have a salute come his way from the
barkeep, sip on a small whiskey and a large beer, watch the ladies in
the eternal parade, say hello to Maggie or Delores, match wits with
them on occasion, spend a few dollars, find solace, and think more
about Ivaloo who came every day to the jail.

When the sound of
galloping horses came in the night more than a week later, and the
night before the judge was due to arrive in town, Sheriff Blanes,
having enjoyed his company above The Broken Horse Saloon, rolled over
half asleep, not bothering to give an answer to his company’s
question, “Did you hear that?”

He was unaware that
Trufant had assembled, from Ivaloo’s deliveries, a Derringer
pistol, caught the deputy unawares, bound and gagged him in his
former cell, and raced to a pair of horses in an alley, Ivaloo
standing by. The hoof beats, sounding in the night, echoed in Tascosa
for months on end.

Trufant and Ivaloo
were never seen in the area again and Sheriff Blanes never stopped
wondering how it all had gone down, still missing her in that red
dress each and every day.